Psalms 119:154 - Pleading for Life

This is the Truth Network. Hidden Treasures of the 119th Psalm. Digging around in the Resh section of the 119th Psalm today with the Resh, that letter meaning head, but also in so many ways it's our chooser, okay, or God's chooser.

You know, the direction that you're going to go is based on this idea of the Resh. And so here is the understanding of the previous wisdom, which is verse 154. Plead my cause and deliver me, quicken me according to thy word. And you know, the point here is I've thought more and more about this verse is the reason why we need him to plead our causes because our chooser has gone awry.

And so, as in always the case with 119 Psalm, the first word in the verse in Hebrew accord, of course, starts with that Resh. And so that Resh letter comes at the head of the word plead. And so is asking the Lord to plead.

Isn't that fascinating? I mean, who would that be? Obviously, it would have to be Jesus who is pleading his cause. I mean, it's absolutely cool that understanding of the wisdom of, you know, considering is that he's first, the wisdom is to ask God to consider. And secondly, the understanding would be that Jesus needs to plead.

In other words, you know, I just have a struggle with my chooser, and I don't know if you had the same struggle I do, but I just do. And so we're asking here for Jesus to choose us, essentially, and deliver us, quicken us, meaning make us alive in your word. And this is so amazing if we can be made alive, if our chooser can be made up and go and our head can go in the direction of the word. Wow, what a wonderful understanding if we could actually do that, because again, when the understanding has to do with doing.

So, you know, as we choose these things, we actually literally have to do them. And so just to show how I struggle with this, just last night, my mother in law just tends to love to watch movies on Lifetime, which have some horrible content, and I never, I do my best to avoid her, where she's watching them or whatever, because it just sounds like murder the whole time that she's watching these kind of things. But anyway, as I walked by, I went to do something for my wife, and I just walked by the room and I heard, overheard something that was being said in the movie that was pretty suggestive.

And immediately my mind, my chooser went there. I mean, and I was, I struggled with it for the next 15 or 20 minutes. I was just trying to choose, like God show me, deliver me from where my mind is going with this piece of information I did not want.

It was fascinating to me that I really didn't get a solution. I mean, I read my Nightly Devotion, which I do this Spurgeon Devotion that's called Morning and Evening that was given to me by James Banks. I just absolutely beloved that. And I did that and I prayed. I was like, God, just help me see why I'm choosing these things over other things. And so this morning, actually, it was fascinating to me that I was studying this verse and this idea of choice. And I remembered a phone call I got yesterday from a wonderful listener by the name of Ron, who had been listening to the ideas that I had shared on the letter cuff with being proximity in time and space. And he had called me and we'd had a wonderful discussion about that letter and about how getting close to God is this wonderful experience. He said when he heard it on the air, when I talked about it on the Christian Car Guys show, he actually pulled over so he could just get a feeling of what it was I was talking about, because he'd had an experience back when he was in college, a wonderful story about this professor who'd gone awry, a Bible professor who was teaching actually blasphemy about the Bible. And he kept challenging him.

And the kids in the class got upset with him because they just want to get through the class. And he felt in this a closeness to God through this particular struggle. And he sensed God's pleasure, but he sensed it in a sense of proximity, in a sense of how close he was to God, which again, gets you closer to eternity, which gives you that idea of, you know, of a loss of anxiousness, because when you're in eternity, what can you be anxious for? And as I began to think about what he was telling me and that testimony of his that he shared with me yesterday, believe it or not, that testimony was the answer to my problem the night before.

Right. I could see now why I needed to choose God and moving closer to God rather than going in the direction that this suggestive thing had taught me was like, man, now I, you know, it was, it was, it was obviously he was pleading my cause and delivering me, but it took a little more time than I wish it would have. You know that, in other words, I wasn't sitting there just bathing in that all night, but I was still struggling a little bit with why can't I get my chooser to go completely in this other direction?

Well, I was delivered from that this morning, because again, I think it was praying this verse and thinking about this verse that I really, you know, when I'm seeking after life, which is exactly what this verse is talking about, when it says quicken me, I am want to look for life in all the right places, not in the wrong places. And I want not just my mind to do that, that's one thing. But if my heart isn't there, then I'm going to continue to struggle. So I my heart has to be on board, my soul has to be on board. In other words, we, we got to get the whole thing together.

And that isn't so easy. So I want, I love, love, love this verse. And I love the fact that obviously, we can't do this apart from God, right?

Apart from me, you can do nothing. Or, you know, my goodness is nothing apart from you, is the psalmist says. So, you know, here we see that it requires Jesus to plead our cause. It requires God's help in so many different ways for our head to direct our soul, our chooser, whatever that looks like in the letter race, as we continue to study. I hope you're enjoying this as much as me. Thanks for listening.